'The four of us,' I said, 'never spread out very far. We work together, we fight together, and we can win together.'
'They ain't around,' Sandy-boy said, 'only one bed, only his horse and the greaser's.'
Up on the hills there was a stirring in the pines and because I'd been hearing it all evening I knew it was a wind along the ridge, but they stopped talking to listen.
'I'm a Sackett,' I said conversationally, 'out of Tennessee. We finished a feud a couple of years ago ... somebody from the other outfit shot a Sackett and we killed nineteen Higginses in the next sixteen years. Never stop huntin'. I got a brother named Tell Sackett ... best gunshot ever lived.'
I was just talking, and the twig was burning. Charley Smith saw it. 'Hey!' he said. 'You'll burn--!'
The fire touched my fingers and I yelped with pain and dropped the twig and with the same continuing movement I drew my gun and shot that rifleman out of the saddle.
Sandy was grabbing iron when I swung my gun on him and thumbed my hammer twice so it sounded like one shot and he went backwards off his horse like he'd been hit with an axe.
Swinging my gun on Smith I saw him on the ground holding his belly and Tom Sunday came riding up with a Henry rifle.
'Smartest play I ever saw,' he said, watching Smith on the ground. 'When I saw you lighting up I knew there had to be something ... knowing you didn't smoke.'
'Thanks, you sure picked a good time to ride up.'
Sunday got down and walked over to the man who'd held the rifle. He was dead with a shot through the heart and Sandy had taken two bullets through the heart also. Sunday glanced at me. 'I saw it but I still don't believe it.'
Thumbing shells into my gun I walked over to Miguel. He was up on one elbow his face whiter than I'd have believed and his eyes bigger. 'Gracias, amigos,' he whispered.
'Orrin told me you'd come out here and I was restless so I figured I'd ride out and camp with you. When I saw you in the middle of them I was trying to figure out what to do that wouldn't start them shooting at you. Then you did it.'
'They'd have killed us.'
'Pritts will take your helping Miguel as a declaration of war.'
There was more sound out in the darkness and we pulled back out of the light of the fire. It was Cap Rountree and two of Alvarado's hands. One of them was Pete Romero, but the other was a man I didn't know.
He was a slim, knifelike man in a braided leather jacket, the most duded-up man I ever saw, but his pearl- handled six-shooter was hung for business and he had a look in his eyes that I didn't like.
His name was Chico Cruz.
Cruz walked over to the bodies and looked at them. He took out a silver dollar and placed it over the two bullet holes in Sandy's chest. He pocketed the dollar and looked at us.
'Who?'
Sunday jerked his head to indicate me. 'His ... and that one too.' He indicated the man with the rifle. Then he explained what had happened, not mentioning the burning twig, but the fact that I'd been covered by the rifle.
Cruz looked at me carefully and I had a feeling this was a man who enjoyed killing and who was proud of his ability with a gun. He squatted by the fire and poured a cup of coffee. It was old coffee, black and strong. Cruz seemed to like it.
Out in the darkness, helping Romero get Miguel into the saddle, I asked, 'Who's he?'
'From Mexico. Torres sent for heem. He is a bad man. He has kill many times.'
Cruz looked to me like one of those sleek prairie rattlers who move like lightning and kill just as easily, and there was nothing about him that I liked.
Yet I could understand the don sending for him. The don was up against a fight for everything he had. It worried him, and he knew he was getting old, and he was no longer sure that he could win.
When I came back to the fire, Chico Cruz looked up at me. 'It was good shooting,' he said, 'but I can shoot better.'
Now I'm not a man to brag, but how much better can you get?
'Maybe,' I said.
'Someday we might shoot together,' he said, looking at me through the smoke of his cigarette.
'Someday,' I said quietly, 'we might.'
'I shall look forward to it, senor.'
'And I,' I smiled at him, 'I shall look back upon it.'
Chapter XI
We expected trouble from Pritts but it failed to show up. Orrin came out to the place and with a couple of men Don Luis loaned us and help from Cap and Tom we put a house together. It was the second day, just after work finished when we were setting around the fire that Orrin told Tom Sunday he was going after the marshal's job.
Sunday filled his cup with coffee. His mouth stiffened up a little, but he laughed. 'Well, why not? You'd make a good marshal, Orrin ... if you get the job.'
'I figured you wanted it ....' Orrin started to say, then his words trailed off as Tom Sunday waved a hand.
'Forget it. The town needs somebody and whoever gets it will do a job. If I don't get it and you do, I'll lend a hand ... I promise that. And if I get it, you can help me.'
Orrin looked relieved, and I knew he was, because he had been worried about it.
Only Cap looked over his coffee cup at Tom and made no comment, and Cap was a knowing man.
Nobody needed to be a fortuneteller to see what was happening around town. Every night there were drunken brawls in the street, and a man had been murdered near Elizabethtown, and there had been robberies near Cimarron. It was just a question of how long folks would put up with it.
Meanwhile we went on working on the house, got two rooms of it up and Orrin and me set to making furniture for them. We finished the third room on the house and then Orrin and me rode with Cap over to the Grant where we bought fifty head of young stuff and drove it back and through the gap where we branded the cattle and turned them loose.
Working hard like we had, I'd not seen much of Drusilla, so I decided to ride over. When I came up Antonio Baca and Chico Cruz were standing at the gate, and I could see that Baca was on duty there. It was the first time I'd seen him since the night he tried to knife me on the trail.
When I started to ride through the gate, he stopped me. 'What is it you want?'
'To see Don Luis,' I replied.
'He is not here.'
'To see the senorita, then.'
'She does not wish to see you.'
Suddenly I was mad. Yet I knew he would like nothing better than to kill me.
Also, I detected something in his manner ... he was insolent. He was sure of himself.
Was it because of Chico Cruz? Or could it be that the don was growing old and Torres could not be everywhere?
'Tell the senorita,' I said, 'that I am here. She will see me.'
'It is not necessary.' His eyes taunted me. 'The senorita is not interested in such as you.'
Chico Cruz moved his shoulders from the wall and walked slowly over. 'I think,' he said, 'you had better do like he say.'
There was no burned-match trick to work on them, and anyway, I wasn't looking for a fight with any of Don Luis' people. The don had troubles of his own without me adding to them. So I was about to ride off when I heard her voice.
'Tye!' She sounded so glad I felt a funny little jump inside me. 'Tye, why are you waiting out there? Come in!'
Only I didn't come in, I just sat my horse and said, 'Senorita, is it all right if I call here? At any time?'
'But of course, Tye!' She came to the gate and saw Baca standing there with his rifle. Her eyes flashed. 'Antonio! Put that rifle down! Senor Sackett is our friend! He is to come and go as he wishes, do you
